New York City public advocate and mayoral frontrunner Bill de Blasio has voiced support for new harassment protections for unpaid interns. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

11:32 am, Oct. 11: this post has been updated to include proposals to amend state legislation.

Last week, a federal judge threw out former intern Lihuan Wang’s sexual harassment lawsuit against her boss at Phoenix Satellite Television U.S. Why? The judge ruled Wang, an unpaid intern, wasn’t an actual employee.

“Because Ms. Wang was an unpaid intern, she may not assert claims under the cited provisions of the [New York State Human Rights Law] and the [New York City Human Rights Law],” wrote U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel.

Castel noted that despite several recent amendments to the New York City Human Rights law, unpaid interns are still not explicitly covered. But that may not be the case for long. In response to the judge’s ruling, city council member Gale Brewer announced she would propose legislation to extend harassment protections to unpaid interns.

“As we have seen with a number of recent cases, interns are ripe for exploitation from their superiors,” council member Brewer said in an emailed statement. “We need to ensure that every person in the city of New York is offered the full protections of our Human Rights Law.”

Public advocate and mayoral frontrunner Bill de Blasio has also voiced support for the proposal.

Brewer’s office said they weren’t aware of the loophole until the recent court decision.

“It takes a shocking opinion like this to catalyze some action,” said Wang’s lawyer Lynne Bernabei.

Wang interned in the Hong Kong-based media company’s New York office from December 2009 to January 2010, while getting her master’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University. Bernabei said Wang was doing much of the same work as Phoenix’s paid journalists, including on-air reporting.

Wang alleged that her boss Zhengzhu Liu lured her to his hotel room under the pretense of discussing her job performance and then groped her. According to the complaint, he later invited Wang to Atlantic City “to discuss job opportunities.” When she refused to go, Liu allegedly dropped all interest in hiring her, “in clear retaliation for her refusing his sexual advances.”

Phoenix Television could not be reached for comment. In a statement sent to Mother Jones in response to the D.C. lawsuit, Phoenix Television said it doesn’t tolerate “discrimination, sexual harassment, or retaliation in its workplace."

We’ve reported beforehow unpaid interns in many areas of the country aren’t protected from harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Lawmakers in Oregon and Washington D.C. have passed legislation to close the loophole, allowing complaints like the Phoenix case to proceed where they may be otherwise dismissed.

Both policies extend discrimination and harassment protections to unpaid interns, but do not address questions about pay. Brewer’s proposal would follow a similar model.

Brewer said unpaid interns may be especially vulnerable to harassment. “By their very nature, unpaid interns are less likely to have prior work experience,” Brewer said. “As they often take on internships in an effort to get a foot in the door, they are less likely to report offensive behavior.”

“The fact that there’s no legislation to protect them...encourages people like Liu to harass these women,” Bernabei said. “They have no accountability, and companies know they don’t have to take action when they learn about it.”

4 comments

Though Ms. Wang’s case will not be the historical precedent of one of the worst decisions in the annals of the Supreme Court, it sounds very ‘Dred Scott-ian’ to me. Recall that the Court ruled that Dred Scott not being a citizen had no right to sue. And as I recall too, the ruling was issued by Taney-a slave owner.

I’m glad to see ProPublica’s continuing coverage of labor issues in the intern economy, and so I appreciated the reporting in this piece. However, it seems rather strange that the author neglected to mention that Bill de Blasio and Gale Brewer, the city politicians prominently featured here, both make use of unpaid interns themselves. De Blasio’s use of unpaid labor has been recently reported on at the Atlantic Wire (http://is.gd/Hvu2nw), and there’s been mention of Brewer’s unpaid intern force in the media as well (http://is.gd/KenuEf), even if the last few years have seen relative silence. For me, at least, the fact that politicians are refusing to address the widespread use of unpaid interns—which some, including myself, would argue amounts to illegal wage theft—in politics should cast doubt on the moral authority of their statements against the widespread abuse of unpaid workers in the economy at large.

It’s my hope that ProPublica’s future reporting looks at this issue more deeply. Otherwise, keep doing what you’re doing, and thanks for all the work so far.

No one should ever be denied protection against sexual harassment in the workplace. Period.

Wow. It’s about damned time someone took that stand. And from someone about to run for election, no less.

Admittedly, there’s still a part of me that says that “harassment” is a little too vague and can become a catch-all for anything people don’t like. However, what I like even less is the fence-posting culture we’ve developed that says that I have a right to sue my employer over an inappropriate joke but other people do not.

Honestly, let’s worry about payment later. Being paid isn’t going to get them treated any more like human beings, after all.

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The number of internships in the United States has ballooned over the past few decades. But oversight and legal protection for unpaid interns hasn't kept up.

The Story So Far

The number of internships in the United States has ballooned over the past few decades. But oversight and legal protection for interns hasn’t kept up. We’re investigating companies that may be violating labor laws by employing unpaid workers, schools’ role in the issue and how it’s affecting American workers.

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